melanoma wife: Walk by Faith-everyday

LEARN THE ABCDEF'S OF MELANOMA!!! EARLY DETECTION IS THE KEY!

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Walk by Faith-everyday

You know, living in our 5th wheel has been very interesting-some days I feel like screaming, some days crying-then other days I truly feel that we are blessed beyond words. The closeness we have felt over the past month is amazing-although I will admit, sometimes Marcus has to remind me-but we have been a closer family because of our surroundings-we have no other choice ;) But seriously, we know that this is situation is temporary, and God is working all around us, getting things in order(mainly healing Marcus by making those tumors go away!)-we just have to "Walk by Faith", even when we cannot see!! Sometimes the world (or the devil) makes it easy to get distracted or frustrated about our lives or situations-we are always so impatient and want things done our way-NOW! I admit that I am like that A LOT-but I try very hard to let go of those feelings and I pray for God to get me through with patience. I know for years the devil really worked on me and made me believe that because of my past mistakes or my genetics, I would one day, eventually, go down a path of destruction and there was nothing I could do about it.....THANK YOU LORD for showing me that this is NOT true!!! Jesus has already paid for our sins-done-we are forgiven! All we have to learn is that we must repent, ask Jesus to come into our hearts and lives-and live our lives the way He wants us to-bottom line. The devil cannot win that war-unless we let him-so I decided a long time ago that God would win me-NOT the devil!! And every day I truly "Walk by Faith" and pray for guidance-won't you join me????

Please watch the Jeremy Camp video attached-he is very talented and I have not found a song that I didn't like from him-he is truly blessed with a unique way to get the message and word of God out to people through his music. Thank you Jeremy Camp for following through with the path God has for you!!!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...: Saying prayers for your family. I have been in your shoes. My husband went through 6 weeks of IL-2. It got rid of his lung mets, but then it showed up in his bowel. After surgery he is disease free and we pray he stays that way. The worrying just doesn't stop. I worry and pray everyday. Like you we have two small children (boys) 5 and 3. I have to remind myself everyday to have faith. I pray this treatment works for your husband. God Bless you and your family.; November 20, 2009 at 5:36 PM
Mindy Stanley Anderson said...: thank you for this comment. i would really like to talk to you further about your journey-please email me directly at mstanley@gt.rr.com. you and your family are in our prayers as well. we need warriors like our husbands to keep up the fight against this monster! stay strong!!! keep walking by faith with me girl!!; November 21, 2009 at 11:46 AM

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how it all began-the "mole" story

well, just for those that don't already know-here is how this journey began. it all started with a little mole that marcus had since birth, on his thumb. in early 2007, i noticed that it had started to change-it was bigger and part of it was black and part was brown-i really didn't know much about melanoma, but i remember the way it looked-it reminded me of the mole on my niece's foot that a dr. removed when she was small, because he said if they didn't remove it, most definitely it would turn cancerous when she went through puberty. ANYWAYS, so i began nagging sweet hubby to go get it looked at. of course, he kept saying, "it's no big deal, i have had this mole since i was born-it's fine". so life went on.

well, hubby works with his hands since he is a machinist, and he bumped the mole-it bled-it grew bigger. a few months later, he bumped it at work AGAIN-it bled-it grew bigger-and now it actually started to bother him. it was sensitive.

one day out of the blue he called me from work-and asked me to make an appt. for him to go to the dr. to get the mole removed. THANK GOD! so of course i got right on that phone and made him an appt. first call to his current primary care phys. was a joke-they couldn't see him for at least another week or so because they were only seeing flu patients on fridays (the only weekday hubby has off) and didn't feel his mole was anything to fret about! well, i sure thought it was and called my primary care phys.-she had no problem seeing him on friday like he wanted!

sure enough, once he saw her, she didn't like the looks of the mole and immediately sent him to a dermatologist. and only by God's hand guiding-did she decide to NOT wait 3-6 months for a dermatolgist in beaumont to get an opening-but she sent him to a dr. in mid-county-that she didn't even know-she had just received his business card in the mail the week before-and decided since he could work hubby in so quickly-that he was the ONE!!! THANK YOU GOD!!!!

well, the next week came-marcus went to the dermatologist-wanting to get that mole removed!! to his surprise-the dr. wanted to biopsy it-he didn't like the looks of it either. (do you see a pattern here? sweet wife was on to something !) he talked the med. asst. lady into cutting as much of the mole off as she could-and she did-we later found out that she removed all the cancer from the thumb with that biopsy! one week later, we were told that the biopsy showed malignant melanoma and they sent us straight to MD Anderson in Houston!!!! talk about scary!

the medical oncologist explained that the type of cancer he had was called superficial spreading melanoma-and it liked to spread to the lymph nodes-so he suggested a partial amputation of the thumb-to make sure he got all the cancer-and a sentinal node biopsy-to see which, if any lymph nodes had cancer- Marcus wanted to save his thumb-so that is what they did. the dr. removed the margin around what was left of the mole-and took a skin graft from the side of his stomach to rebuild the thumb. this all healed very well.

they did the sentinal node biopsy and found that there was one lymph node under his arm that had cancer-it ended up having 20 cells in it-so they suggested he remove all the lypmh nodes from under his arm. he did this and all the other nodes came back CANCER FREE!!!!!!!

now they also suggested he do 4 weeks of high dose interferon to kill any cells that may have gotten loose from that node-to prevent this monster from coming back. they also want him to do 11 months of the interferon shots-but we don't know how far he will go with those. all depends on how sick they make him-and if they are anything like the high dose-he may only go 2 weeks.**MARCUS COMPLETED 4 WEEKS OF HIGH DOSE INTERFERON AND DID THE SHOTS 3/WEEK FOR ABOUT 3 MONTHS BEFORE HE STOPPED**

we later discovered that once the cancer has spread to lymph nodes closest to the mole, it is considered stage III-no one ever really told us this-we had to learn on our own.***UPDATE-8-31-09 LUNG METS WERE DISCOVERED SO MARCUS WAS UPGRADED TO STAGE IV***
***AFTER IL-2 AND SEVERAL CHEMO COMBOS, MARCUS LOST HIS BATTLE 4-1-2010. MELANOMA SUCKS!!!***

this is a brief outline of the "mole" story-hope it was easy to follow-and hope it makes everyone think twice about their moles!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! PLEASE LEARN ABOUT MELANOMA-IT IS NOT "JUST" SKIN CANCER!!!!!

melanoma wife

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LEARN THE ABCDEF'S OF MELANOMA!!! EARLY DETECTION IS THE KEY!

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Thursday, November 19, 2009

Walk by Faith-everyday

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